Technical Field
The technology relates to machine vision, and to electronic processing of captured images to adaptively control search window sizes used for feature matching between successive images in an image sequence. The feature matching may be used to generate optical flow data.
Discussion of the Related Art
The detection of interest points within electronically-captured images and feature matching between images is useful for a variety of computer-vision applications. For example, interest point detection and feature matching may be used in machine-implemented methods for localization, mapping, tracking, and/or object recognition. Examples of interest points include, without being limited to, edges, corner, ridges, localized contrasted regions and blobs. Features associated with the interest points identified in a first image may be tested for matches with features of one or more other images based at least in part upon a comparison of descriptor data generated for interest points for the first and second images. For successful machine-vision applications, an appreciable number of interest points (e.g., hundreds or thousands) may be required to be identified and processed per image frame. When features are compared from image to image, a comparison of one feature from a first image may be compared against all features of one or more other images, and the process repeated for each feature of the first image. As may be appreciated, the comparison of features from image to image may entail a substantial number of numerical computations.